Too Late To Love Me I Already Left With His Twins (Lydia and Dave) novel Chapter 20

Aftermath

Lydia POV

By the time the flu finally left my body, it had taken something else with it.

I just didn’t know the exact name for it yet.

Maybe that last embarrassing part of me that still believed if I reached out enough, someone would eventually reach back.

Whatever it was, it was gone.

And honestly?

Good riddance. 1

The first morning I woke up without a fever, I lay in bed staring at the ceiling for so long that the sunlight had already shifted across the room by the time I sat up.

My body still felt heavy.

Like I had been wrung dry. 1

The tissue box on my bedside table looked like it had survived a small war. My water bottle was half full. My plant on the windowsill looked slightly offended with me for not watering it in two days.

“Sorry,” I muttered to it. 1

Because apparently the only healthy relationship in my life now was with a potted plant.

I pushed the duvet off and dragged myself to the bathroom.

The mirror did not greet me kindly.

My face looked slimmer. My eyes still carried that faint post-sickness dullness, and my skin had the sort of tiredness no serum could solve.

I brushed my teeth slowly, washed my face, and stared at myself again.

Just me.

Still here.

Still alive.

Still not anyone’s priority.

I tied my hair into a loose bun, pulled on one of the oversized T-shirts from the wardrobe that had mysteriously appeared in my life, and headed downstairs.

The house was too quiet.

It usually felt peaceful.

That morning, it felt hollow.

Bernard looked up immediately when I entered the dining room.

1/6

+15 8cnus

“Good morning, ma,” he said, already halfway toward me. “You’re up.’

Modded and sat down.

He hesitated for a second before asking, “How are you feeling now?”

“Alive,” I said.

His mouth twitched like he wanted to smile but didn’t know if he was allowed to.

“That is good, ma.”

I gave a small shrug and reached for the cup of tea that had already been poured.

It had gone slightly warm.

I drank it anyway.

“Would you like breakfast?” he asked.

Usually I would have said something specific. Something mildly greedy. Pancakes if I was feeling cheerful. Toasted sandwiches if I wanted comfort. Eggs if I was pretending to be responsible.

That morning, I just said, “Anything is fine.”

Bernard paused.

Then he nodded. “Alright, ma.”

He left for the kitchen.

I sat there with my tea and looked out through the tall glass windows into the garden.

The flowers were still blooming like nothing in the world had happened.

Very rude of them.

When breakfast arrived, it was a neat plate of toast, eggs, and fruit.

I stared at it for a while.

Then I forced myself to eat.

Halfway through, I stopped.

Bernard noticed.

He didn’t comment.

Which, somehow, made me like him more.

After breakfast, I wandered back upstairs and opened my laptop, intending to continue my course work.

The screen glowed.

A case study on employee conflict management sat open in one tab. My draft proposal for the next module sat in another.

Usually, that would have excited me.

2/6

+15 Bonus

Usually, I liked this part. The learning. The quiet satisfaction of understanding something new. The possibility that maybe one day, if life ever stopped behaving like a badly written soap opera, I could build something of my ong.

But that day, the words looked like furniture.

I closed the laptop.

I didn’t go to the café.

I didn’t watch K-drama.

I didn’t scroll social media until my brain turned into soup.

I just sat by the window with a blanket over my legs and listened to the house breathe around me.

At some point, I realized I hadn’t checked my phone in hours.

Not because I was busy.

Because I already knew there would be nothing there.

No message from anyone asking if I had survived my own illness.

And weirdly enough, that hurt less than it should have.

It was easier, in a way.

Hard to be disappointed when you’ve finally accepted the standard.

By evening, I was back downstairs, curled into one corner of the living room sofa with my laptop open on my thighs and absolutely no intention of doing anything productive with it.

The blanket.

The untouched tea on the side table.

My bare face.

The fact that I was here but not really here.

“You look…” He stopped.

I almost smiled.

Terrible? Half-dead? Like somebody had microwaved my soul and forgotten to stop it halfway?

4/6

“Alive?” I offered. “That’s the review I’ve been getting.”

F’s jaw shifted once.

“You were sick?”

a question.

So he’s asking me if I were sick, knowing fully well I had called him for help, lols. 1

“Mm.”

“How long?”

I stared at the TV for a second before answering.

“It wasn’t long enough to kill me”

“Hmm”

There was something in his tone then.

Not concern exactly.

More like… irritation.

Like he didn’t like being out of the loop.

Funny.

I had spent my entire marriage out of the loop.

“Why didn’t you go to the hospital?” he asked.

I turned my head and looked at him properly for the first time since he entered.

“Because I had medicine.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

“And I answered anyway.”

Something unreadable crossed his face.

For a second, neither of us spoke.

The TV couple was still silently fighting over countertops behind us.

I almost envied them.

At least they had enough intimacy to annoy each other.

Dave’s eyes lingered on me again.

Then he said, “You should have called.”

+15 Bonus